With great interest, we read the letters that have commented on the recent European League Against Rheumatism/American College of Rheumatology classification criteria for idiopathic inflammatory myopathies1 (IIMs) and ensuing discussions.2 3 This highlights how harmonising myositis-specific antibodies (MSA) testing methodologies is currently a hot topic of debate among laboratory specialists, clinicians and manufacturers. I would particularly like to share our own immunology laboratory experience by expanding on the letter entitled ‘Detection of myositis-specific antibodies: additional notes’ by M Mahler and M Fritzler4 with which we wholly agree. Newer technologies, such as line immunoassays (LIA) and dot blots (DB), which provide greater sensitivity and rapid serological diagnoses, have standardisation and specificity drawbacks, but the tight connection between autoantibodies and clinical phenotypes underline a great need …

中文翻译：

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对“肌炎特异性抗体检测：附加说明”的回应

我们怀着极大的兴趣阅读了最近对欧洲抗风湿病联盟/美国风湿病学会特发性炎症性肌病 (IIM) 的分类标准 1 和随后的讨论进行评论的信件。 2 3 这突出了如何协调肌炎特异性抗体 (MSA) 测试方法论目前是实验室专家、临床医生和制造商之间争论的热门话题。我特别想通过扩展 M Mahler 和 M Fritzler4 题为“肌炎特异性抗体的检测：附加说明”的信件来分享我们自己的免疫学实验室经验，我们完全同意这一点。较新的技术，如线性免疫分析 (LIA) 和斑点印迹 (DB)，提供更高的灵敏度和快速的血清学诊断，但在标准化和特异性方面存在缺陷，